Madison WI - Prop-Jam
pattywac
Posts: 22
Hey everyone,
If you'll be in the Madison area for the first weekend in May (5th and 6th), sign up and join us for the first annual Madison, WI Prop-Jam.
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3199709417
I've limited attendance to 25 people but might be able to expand to 30 if it gets a big enough response. I'm posting the information here first and will be opening it to a wider audience in a few days, so sign up now if you can make it.
-Nathan
Info from eventbrite:
When: Start - May 5, 2012 @ 10am End - May 6, 2012 @ 1pm
Where: Sector 67 (2100 Winnebago St, Madison, WI 53704)
What (to bring): Caffeine, any extra hardware/electronics you want to use, and a Propeller based board if you have one to use for the weekend.
Who: Anyone interested in developing a project that uses the Parallax Propeller
The Prop-Jam is being modeled after our collective experience in setting up and running the Global Game Jam ( http://globalgamejam.org/ ) in Madison for the past few years. This means that everyone, from all development skill levels, is invited to attend and work with others on a Propeller based project that can be completed in the 27 hours we have together.
Timeline: (coffee/food breaks throughout)
Saturday
10-11am - Meet others and talk about your project ideas. If you don't have an idea, find one you like and team up to maximize how much you can accomplish during the Prop-Jam. Try to keep groups smaller than 7 people (otherwise you run the risk of group implosion) and larger than 1 person (if no one can appreciate the awesomeness of your idea.... maybe it's not so awesome?)
11am-rest of day - Work with your team to develop, test, and iterate on your project idea
Sunday
12am - 12pm - Work with your team to continue developing, testing, and iterating on project ideas
12pm - 1pm - Teams will present their projects to the rest of the people at the Prop-Jam
After 1pm - You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.....
Suggested discussion topics for initial meet and greet:
How much experience do you have developing with the Propeller?
How much experience do you have creating electrical and mechanical components?
What type of electrical/mechanical hardware/parts have you brought with you?
What is the world's best cereal?
Suggested presentation topics:
What did you work on for the past 26+ hours?
How is your final project different from the initial idea?
What, if any, development tricks did you pick up from working with the Propeller or from others?
Ken Gracey (Parallax Inc) has generously agreed to send some boards out for people to use. We will distribute them to the groups as they form, but there will certainly be some fried/damaged boards by Sunday afternoon. If you have a personal Propeller board that you can bring to work on, you should probably bring it as backup.
We are working on sponsors for food and drink, but cannot promise free anything at this time. Sector67 is near many places to eat, including our favorite $5 hot-and-ready pizza place, so your commute to find food will be a short one. We will update on this and hopefully be able to supply at least one meal for everyone.
Who are we?
We are co-founders of Radiant Fabrication, a startup company based in Madison, WI focused on the development of a novel advanced manufacturing platform. We are still developing our first product for launch this summer and are keeping quiet for now, but will be able to share more information soon.
If you'll be in the Madison area for the first weekend in May (5th and 6th), sign up and join us for the first annual Madison, WI Prop-Jam.
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3199709417
I've limited attendance to 25 people but might be able to expand to 30 if it gets a big enough response. I'm posting the information here first and will be opening it to a wider audience in a few days, so sign up now if you can make it.
-Nathan
Info from eventbrite:
When: Start - May 5, 2012 @ 10am End - May 6, 2012 @ 1pm
Where: Sector 67 (2100 Winnebago St, Madison, WI 53704)
What (to bring): Caffeine, any extra hardware/electronics you want to use, and a Propeller based board if you have one to use for the weekend.
Who: Anyone interested in developing a project that uses the Parallax Propeller
The Prop-Jam is being modeled after our collective experience in setting up and running the Global Game Jam ( http://globalgamejam.org/ ) in Madison for the past few years. This means that everyone, from all development skill levels, is invited to attend and work with others on a Propeller based project that can be completed in the 27 hours we have together.
Timeline: (coffee/food breaks throughout)
Saturday
10-11am - Meet others and talk about your project ideas. If you don't have an idea, find one you like and team up to maximize how much you can accomplish during the Prop-Jam. Try to keep groups smaller than 7 people (otherwise you run the risk of group implosion) and larger than 1 person (if no one can appreciate the awesomeness of your idea.... maybe it's not so awesome?)
11am-rest of day - Work with your team to develop, test, and iterate on your project idea
Sunday
12am - 12pm - Work with your team to continue developing, testing, and iterating on project ideas
12pm - 1pm - Teams will present their projects to the rest of the people at the Prop-Jam
After 1pm - You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.....
Suggested discussion topics for initial meet and greet:
How much experience do you have developing with the Propeller?
How much experience do you have creating electrical and mechanical components?
What type of electrical/mechanical hardware/parts have you brought with you?
What is the world's best cereal?
Suggested presentation topics:
What did you work on for the past 26+ hours?
How is your final project different from the initial idea?
What, if any, development tricks did you pick up from working with the Propeller or from others?
Ken Gracey (Parallax Inc) has generously agreed to send some boards out for people to use. We will distribute them to the groups as they form, but there will certainly be some fried/damaged boards by Sunday afternoon. If you have a personal Propeller board that you can bring to work on, you should probably bring it as backup.
We are working on sponsors for food and drink, but cannot promise free anything at this time. Sector67 is near many places to eat, including our favorite $5 hot-and-ready pizza place, so your commute to find food will be a short one. We will update on this and hopefully be able to supply at least one meal for everyone.
Who are we?
We are co-founders of Radiant Fabrication, a startup company based in Madison, WI focused on the development of a novel advanced manufacturing platform. We are still developing our first product for launch this summer and are keeping quiet for now, but will be able to share more information soon.
Comments
This is a reminder of the upcoming Madison, WI Prop-Jam. I'm still working on sponsors, but hope to have good news soon re: food. 10 people have signed up already and we have a max of 25 people.... so sign up if you can make it.
Hope to see you there,
Nathan
Be careful Nathan... This is similar to the formula for UPENE... almost a 100 people showed up the first year...
Sounds like a blast! Wish I could go as an attendee.
OBC
Most of what I have at the moment is Christmas lighting controllers (dimmers, relays, etc). Not sure how much interest there is in this.
I can bring a propforth demo and the DS00 laser range finder if folks are interested.
prof_braino, sounds good.... we've got at least one person that has expressed interest in propforth.
No worries, I have plenty of hardware and I've benefited from Parallax donated hardware in the past save it for others.
Everyone else, there are only 6 spots left..... so if you are interested in attending I suggest you sign up soon.
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3199709417
-Nathan
But whatever you do, don't go to that block party.
I have never been so embarrassed about my alma mater. Surely there was someone qualified to be Dean of Students available.
WIZ820io or WIZ812MJ?
Sector67 also sells some basic stuff, like wiring bundles, breadboards, and quite a few other things. I also just received some goodies to share with participants......
There are only 5 spots left, so sign up while you still can!
-Nathan
As I mentioned before I can only attend for a while on Sat so it won't be an issue for me. However I would encourage everyone to bring laptops, I'm not sure if that was part of the invite.
Or two, or three...
Thinking this one.
My project is to get input and output status to at least a remote network location, hopefully to a different network via web.
Hey everyone,
We have just ~26 hours before the event starts. I have no idea what experience everyone has with the Propeller programming and/or electronics/hardware prototyping, so I have put together a Google Doc with links to related resources. I will keep adding to the document but if you have any good links you think others could benefit from, please add them to the list (it should be available for anyone to modify).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PfBtvfVC9fEwh_IY9cha10WpuFFEGofqk9Ho-ak_ZKc/edit
See everyone at 10am tomorrow!
Nathan
Event: Madison Prop-Jam
Date: Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 10:00 AM - Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 1:00 PM (CT)
Location:
Sector67
2100 Winnebago Street
Madison, WI 53704
http://www.sector67.org/about.php
They had some neat stuff going on. I'm intrigued by Nathan's secret CNC project (I hope he doesn't have to kill me now that I've mentioned it), and LIDAR measurement of aerosols and particulate matter in clouds. I hope the table full of guys working on prop-games posts their results, as well as the guys working the stereo image capture project.
I was only able to stay long enough to bend a few ears with the DS00 and propforth Go-channels; and to pick up neat stuff including Gordon's "Microcontroller Kickstarter" book. Thanks for the stuff and the pizza!
Madison is even nicer than I remembered it, and Sector67 is cooler than I hoped. I'm getting re-inspired to do something more than documentation...
We had a number of cool and quickly developed projects (if I forget any just respond with a reminder):
A modded video game for the Hydra
A 2-D pen plotter made with stepper motors and carriages taken out of old dvd drives
A group added movement and audio to their already constructed replica of Wall-E
A capacitor powered QuickStart board (moving towards solar cell powered)
The beginnings of a custom Aha compiler for the Prop
A computer-propeller controlled stepper motor
To all of the attendees, thanks for making the event as great as it was. If you didn't sign up for the event with an email or they are being blocked into spam, this is the message I just sent out to everyone:
I particularly want to see a write up of this. I have boat load of old drive in the braino lab waiting to be put to use....